I’m in Minneapolis this week for Netroots Nation. I’ll have lots of interviews and observations to share with you when I’m back in the studio Monday morning. But this one couldn’t wait.
As you may know, the right wing follows us each year and schedules their “Right Online” conference in the same town at the same time we have Netroots Nation. This year, their conference is in the hotel many of the NN participants are staying, while our conference is at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
When I got back to my hotel this evening, I noticed James “Pimp” O’Keefe sitting in the lobby. I knew he was on probation for trying to enter Senator Mary Landreau’s office posing as a telephone repair man and the conditions prohibited him from leaving New Jersey. So I took his picture.
Then his posse starting taking pictures of me and asking what I was doing. I asked if he was breaking the law by being here, and he said he had gotten permission from the court to travel here. He then invited me over for a conversation.
I said no, but they insisted. So, I pulled out the flip cam and began asking questions.
And, for the record, this video has not been edited, even once. This is the entire video I shot, with the entire conversation we had until I just couldn’t take the smug hypocrisy for one moment more.
Nicole: How was O’Keefe dressed like a pimp? He was wearing khakis and a blue button down collared shirt. The girl had on revealing clothing, but Mr. O’Keefe was dressed like a 22 yo preppie. When you take liberties with the truth with one little item, the rest of your entire spiel becomes suspect. I would have liked to hear his explanations, but you kept interrupting your own interview subject. I would also like to see what the unedited video of the ACORN employees showed, do you know where it can be found?
Dear Nicole
I, too, appreciate this. As a lifelong resident of South Central L.A. I and my community benefited from the many wonderful things ACORN did to help make life more tolerable and bearable. Now they are gone, because of this cretin. ACORN was a little row boat in a swelling sea sent to rescue a lot of drowning people. O’Keefe came along in his yacht, and shot a hole through our life boat. I resent to the nth degree the callous, mean-spirited journalistic trickery he did to destroy a lot of lives, jobs, careers, and community infrastructure that has not been replaced. (I resent the Democratic Party for not standing up for ACORN, but that’s a different discussion). In your “interview” you referenced that he needed a judge’s permission to leave the state. I immediately noticed his “tell”. I think his body language reflects that you hit a very, very strong psychic nerve ending for James O’Keefe. Please follow up with the court and confirm this. I think you might have found his Achilles’ heel. Any way, replay the interview and watch his facial muscles change as the lies start. (I’ve watched way too many episodes of Lie to Me…) Thanks for your great service to humanity. Thanks for your service to the residents of South Central and other places who really counted on ACORN and now, have nobody. “Keep lancin those boils”
I appreciate this and it is very damning. However the depressing part is that the right wingers, his audience, will never see this or hear that he manipulated tapes to create a controversy. It wont be covered by Fox and it wont be on Hannity. I wish there was someway to get the “other side” to pay attention to any other source besides Fox and talk radio. All the right wing has to do is make an assertion, no matter how false of illogical, and it becomes an unquestionable truth for its viewers. Thanks for doing this.
a couple things stood out at me, 1:when trying to explain the phone incident, he sounds exactly like a high schooler trying to explain how the situation isn’t as bad as it is when he got busted. 2:is it just me or is his entire entourage British?>
Whoops. I just realized that at the beginning of the video, it says 2001 instead of 2011. That’s what I get for trying to post a video at 2 am. Sorry… You know it was 2011
As it shows through your interview he shows himself to be the little thug he is. His “entourage” of fat aging wannabes always at the ready to protect their brain trust from facts just shows the earnest they have for the rule of law. On entering federal property with the intent of gaining information subversively while impersonating a public employee may not be a significant crime to him but in actuality had he, like most, been charged as a terrorist under the Patriot Act he would hopefully gotten his free room and board at Gitmo.
Any effort to gain access to state secrets and use them for aiding the enemy was overlooked in the usual collusion found in the courts these days and I am sure as your interview shows his lies are for nothing more than promotion of a self importance that only holds value among those dishonest people he associates with.
O’Keefe will like Gitmo. His kind always digs sadism… oh yes, they like it when it happens to someone ELSE, but that’s just a semantic quibble.